Turning the page on one-hit centrefolds

A celebrity, even one with just fleeting recognition, may be remembered for the one thing they got wrong.

An observation made by Hugh Hefner has stuck in my mind for several weeks. Neither Mormon nor Ottoman, Mr Hefner, if you are not familiar with him, is a septuagenarian magazine publisher who lives with seven blonde women, who while in public, pretend to be his girlfriends. If you're in this game, it has to be the easiest gig going because there would be a significant amount of down-time. It's a worker's collective with just one old fellow to look after.

The old chap was ruminating on a woman's decision to become a centrefold. Is it not peculiar that a printer's term, used to describe a particular form of page insert has come to be universally understood as a display of genitalia? We no longer even notice that it is euphemism.

What he observed was that the decision to become a "centrefold" was as important a decision as getting married or having children. He said this with a gravity that could be misinterpreted as self-aggrandising, but I suspect he was right.

Somewhere in the world, at this moment, a woman is about to enter a room. In the room are people both expecting her and privately briefing each other that this woman was once a "centrefold". She revealed herself, for a mere hour or so, 30 years ago and the photographs were subsequently reproduced around the world.

The month and the year that the images were published will act as her signature. When the woman enters the room, the topic will be off-limits, unless she brings it up herself. If she does bring it up, the most graceful way of doing it will be to quickly allude to it, wait for laughter to diffuse the tension and move on. Depending on gender, responses will be predatory or prim.

When she leaves the room, month and year will be noted again and communicated to anyone unaware of these important details, and it is probable that eventually everyone in the room will have seen the photographs. There will be much deliberation about how she has weathered.

A picture always lies because life is not static. It is a well-known metaphorical non-fact that each time you have your photograph taken, a very fine layer of skin is taken from the surface of the body. Furthermore, the black and white nude photograph, currently in vogue, is preferable to the colour shot because it is less damaging. It removes a layer of skin but leaves the pigment on the body. The colour shot leaches its effect from the torso. It also demonstrates that the subject has the good taste to withhold something.

What is less well-known is that the thickness of the layer of skin removed is directly proportional to the number of times that the image is reproduced. Thus, only the extremely thick-skinned should allow themselves to become a public spectacle.

The menschen of Australia seem, today, to be clamouring to make a public spectacle of themselves in apartment renovations, quiz shows and in designer prisons full of hidden cameras. They all expect to win the popularity contest in the hope that the benefit of celebrity will ensue.

They're right. It will. They'll get the attention for a fortnight and then it will evaporate as suddenly as it arrived. Except for the residue. Being in the public eye is like getting a tattoo. You need to get it right because you are going to have to live with it for the rest of your life.

Can you imagine what it's like to be the weather guy on television? Every day, complete strangers, his intimates, will badger him about the weather. The contestant on the quiz show is remembered for the question he got wrong, not the one he got right.

They tell me so, incessantly.

I worked with a guy years ago who had written a cute little song that I was commissioned to produce. He said to me at the outset, "I don't want to be a one-hit wonder". I replied, "You should be so lucky". Most hits are indeed one-offs. What did Hillary do after Everest? What did Orson Welles do after Citizen Kane? As a matter of fact, he did A Touch of Evil, but you weren't to know that so, de facto, it's not a hit.

It turned out that my songwriting protege needn't have worried. Under my masterful tutelage, his record made a promising start and promptly fell in a heap. I spared him the ignominy of being a one-hit wonder.